Archives for October 2010

Government officials in the UK are considering banning people under the age of 18 from tanning salons in an effort to protect their health. Authorities are concerned that the sunbeds may be particularly harmful to youth as their skin and eyes are still developing, reports The Press Association.

According to Health Minister Edwina Hart, more and more children and adolescents have been visiting tanning salons since the 1980s.

“This is worrying because young skin is particularly vulnerable and a compounding issue is that the young are also highly influenced by media images that constantly portray tan as healthy and desirable,” she told the news source.

Hart added that there have been several incidents in the past 18 months in which children had been harmed while visiting unsupervised tanning salons and using the coin-operated tanning beds.

The new laws would require tanning salons to be supervised at all times. Additionally, the salons would have to provide their adult visitors with health information and protective eyewear.

If passed, the new laws would go into effect in October 2011.

According to the American Optometric Association, UV radiation can have a major impact on one’s vision. The organization recommends that all sunglasses screen out 99 to 100 percent of both UV-A and UV-B radiation. All 39DollarGlasses.com sunglasses screen out both UV-A and UV-B rays for full protection from the sun.

Grace Freeman’s parents must be very happy that they put a photograph of their daughter on the popular website, Facebook. According to The Daily Mail, the image of the two-and-a-half-year-old girl helped a nurse discover that the toddler was afflicted with eye cancer.

Nicola Sharp was surfing through Facebook when she came across a picture of her friend Michele Freeman’s daughter, Grace. In the image, the flash had caused the little girl’s eyes to take on a peculiar tint. While the toddler’s right eye appeared red – a common occurrence in flash photography – her left eye was white in color.

Nicola Sharp is a pediatric nurse, and knew that a white pupil in a photograph could be an indication of eye cancer. She quickly contacted Michele, who took Grace to the doctor and discovered that the toddler did indeed have two tumors.

Though Grace’s condition, known as retinoblastoma, may have caused her to lose sight in one eye, if it weren’t for Sharp’s quick reaction, the cancer could have spread and become fatal.

According to the American Optometric Association, school-aged children should be taken to the doctor at least once every other year in order to diagnose any vision problems that may not be noticeable to the untrained eye. Children wearing glasses should go more often as their eyes are constantly growing, and their prescription may change.

Good news for those who suffer from nearsightedness and glaucoma! Scientists have recently discovered the gene responsible for both disorders, according to VOAnews.com.

Researchers for deCODE, a company that focuses on genome-related products and services, studied 40,000 individuals to pinpoint the genes responsible for the most common eye health conditions in the world.

Both glaucoma and myopia are widespread in the population, and effect many people. According to the Glaucoma Research Foundation, it is estimated that over 4 million Americans have glaucoma but only half of those know they have it. According to the World Health Organization, glaucoma is the second leading cause of blindness in the world. Myopia doesn’t cause blindness, but it does effect the vision of a lot of people.

According to VOAnews.com, nearly one-third of Americans, or about 70 million, are nearsighted, and more than $5 billion dollars is spent on treating the condition each year. It is estimated that about 60% (or 42 million) with this eye condition are children. It has also been estimated, by the World Health Organization, that 50% of the world population by the year 2020 will have myopia. The condition is definitely on the rise. Some statistics suggest that only 5% of the population were nearsighted 100 years ago compared to the 30% who have the condition today. For now, options for people with myopia are only corrective eye surgery, which not everyone is a candidate for, or corrective lenses. 39DollarGlasses.com seeks to make myopia, and other conditions that require corrective lenses, as affordable as possible with high quality, prescription lenses at prices that start at $39. It looks like science is making gains on helping correcting myopia medically, however.

“We can reintroduce that gene into the retina by injections at this point, and the retina will take up the healthy gene product and start to produce it and the retina no longer degenerates and the vision improves,” Terri Young, an ophthalmologist at Duke University Medical Center, said of the discovery.

Though it may be a few years before these finding translate into treatment options, those who are currently experiencing difficulty seeing objects that are far away should consult an eye health professional to determine if they suffer from myopia, and what options will work best for them.

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Do you ever have problems wearing your glasses in the sunlight? If you want to maintain excellent vision while avoiding a glare from the sun, you should consider prescription sunglasses. Many people are not aware that you can have sunglasses with your prescription lenses in them, but you certainly can. This will allow you to continue […]